TIL that the famous "Ain't I A Woman?" speech from Sojourner Truth, was actually embellished and re-interpreted 12 years after the fact, by a white abolitionist writer named Frances Dana Barker Gage to center southern slavery.
The Southern AAVE and wording is mostly inaccurate.
Sojourner Truth was actually born and enslaved in upper New York, so she actually had a low-Dutch accent.
She didn't have 13 children, but 5, one of whom she successfully sued to have returned to her from enlsavement, a son.
...And she never used the word "Ain't."
The above video is an account of her words from her friend and abolitionist/journalist Marius Robinson for The Anti-Slavery Bugle, which she signed off on weeks after her speech, -which he also attended.
The Sojourner Truth Project, (thesojournertruthproject.org) has a catalog of Afro-Dutch orators, reading the wording from that orginal article.
The above version is read by Gloria Wekker, in an attempt to approximate an accent closer to what Sojourner Truth might have used.
Below, pictured are Sojourner Truth and the journalist who manipulated her voice to the point that many of us believe the blackfaced account she manipulated, "Ain't I A Woman?"
My mind is blown, learning all of this.
From all the renditions from schoolchildren to famous black actresses...To now know at my grown age, that the AAVE and details were a fictional rendition by a white lady. *smh*
PLEASE spread this, to help it to become closer to common knowledge.
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
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